Madrid-based filmmaker Salvador Mallo's health is in decline, which has made him depressed and reflective. His back pain and headaches have kept him from considering a new project for several years, and recently he has experienced persistent
dysphagia.
Flavor, one of Salvador's old films, has just been restored, and he is asked to appear at a screening. He has not seen the film's lead Alberto in decades, having fallen out over Alberto's
heroin use during filming. Still, he reaches out to Alberto and asks him to present
Flavor with him. When Alberto prepares to smoke heroin, he is surprised Salvador wants to join. Under the influence, Salvador remembers moving with his impoverished parents into a cave-house in
Paterna as a child. When Alberto arrives to take Salvador to the screening, Salvador decides not to go, but the moderator poses audience questions to him over the phone. When asked about their old argument, Salvador repeats his old criticisms and blurts out that Alberto took heroin during filming. Although he says he now approves of Alberto's performance, Alberto is enraged and leaves. Salvador starts to regularly take heroin to manage his pain. He remembers when, as a boy, his mother arranged for him to teach a young man named Eduardo how to read, in exchange for work on the cave. She then used this as evidence of his intelligence to gain him admittance to a
seminary. Although he did not want to leave home or become a priest, his mother saw it as the only way they could afford to get him an education. To make amends, Salvador agrees to let Alberto stage a story he wrote about a relationship he had in the 1980s that fell apart due to his partner Federico's heroin use. Coincidentally, Federico attends the show and obtains Salvador's contact information from Alberto. When the former lovers meet, Federico says he has been living in Argentina and that this is his first time in Madrid in decades. He reveals he has a wife, from whom he is separated, and two sons, and that he has not dated a man since he broke up with Salvador. On his way out the door, Federico offers to stay the night, but Salvador says they should leave their relationship in the past. Salvador then discards his heroin. Accompanied by his assistant, Mercedes, he sees doctors about his pain and dysphagia, and admits to his heroin use. He reveals that he has not recovered either from his mother's death or his back surgery from years earlier. Salvador reminisces with Mercedes about his mother's last days, spent with him in Madrid, when she revealed she did not want him to write stories about her and thought he resented her for sending him to the seminary. Although Salvador was able to apologise for not being the son she wanted, he feels guilty he was not able to take her to her village to die, like he had promised. Mercedes shows Salvador an invitation card to an art gallery and he recognises the painting of a boy on it. He remembers when Eduardo began sketching him after working at the Mallos' cave-house. Eduardo then bathed himself, and young Salvador fainted upon seeing him naked, marking his sexual awakening. Salvador goes to the gallery and learns that the owner had found Eduardo's artwork at a flea market. Salvador buys the painting and discovers a letter written on the back in which Eduardo thanks him for his help tutoring him. Meanwhile, a
CT scan reveals the cause of his dysphagia as an easily operable
calcified growth in his neck, and not a tumour as feared. On the way to his surgery, Salvador muses to Mercedes that his mother must have received the portrait but never mentioned it to him. Mercedes asks if he will try to find Eduardo, but Salvador says too much time has passed and what matters is that the painting finally made its way to him. As Salvador slips into unconsciousness on the operating table, he mentions to his doctor that he has started writing again. He is then seen on a film set directing a scene from his childhood, in a
meta-like ending with Penelope Cruz and Asier Flores. ==Cast==